Call for Papers: Workshop on Automata Induction, Grammatical Inference, and Language Acquisition The Fourteenth International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML-97) July 8-12, 1997, Nashville, Tennessee The Automata Induction, Grammatical Inference, and Language Acquisition Workshop will be held on Saturday, July 12, 1997 during the Fourteenth International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML-97) which will be co-located with the Tenth Annual Conference on Computational Learning Theory (COLT-97) at Nashville, Tennessee from July 8 through July 12, 1997. Additional information on ICML-97 and COLT-97 can be found at: http://cswww.vuse.vanderbilt.edu/mlccolt/ Objectives Machine learning of grammars, variously referred to as automata induction, grammatical inference, grammar induction, and automatic language acquisition, finds a variety of applications in syntactic pattern recognition, adaptive intelligent agents, diagnosis, computational biology, systems modelling, prediction, natural language acquisition, data mining and knowledge discovery. The workshop seeks to bring together researchers working on different aspects of machine learning of grammars in a number of different (and until now, relatively isolated) areas including neural networks, pattern recognition, computational linguistics, computational learning theory, automata theory, and language acquisition for fruitful exchange of the relevant recent research results. Workshop Format The workshop will consist of 3--5 invited talks offering different perspectives on machine learning of grammars, interspersed with short (10--15 minute) presentations of accepted papers. The workshop schedule will allow ample time for informal discussion. Topics of Interest Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: Different models of grammar induction: e.g., learning from examples, learning using examples and queries, incremental versus non-incremental learning, distribution-free models of learning, learning under various distributional assumptions (e.g., simple distributions). Theoretical results in grammar induction: e.g., impossibility results, complexity results, characterizations of representational and search biases of grammar induction algorithms. Algorithms for induction of different classes of languages and automata: e.g., regular, context-free, and context-sensitive languages, interesting subsets of the above under additional syntactic constraints, tree and graph grammars, picture grammars, multi-dimensional grammars, attributed grammars, etc. Empirical comparison of different approaches to grammar induction. Demonstrated or potential applications of grammar induction in natural language acquisition, computational biology, structural pattern recognition, adaptive intelligent agents, systems modelling, and other domains. Submission Guidelines Full paper submissions are highly recommended although extended abstracts will also be considered. The manuscript should be no more than 10 pages long when formatted for generic 8-1/2 x 11 inch pages using the formatting macros and templates available at: http://www.aaai.org/Publications/Templates/macros-link.html Postscript versions of the manuscripts should be emailed so as to arrive by March 15, 1997 at: honavar@cs.iastate.edu, pdupont@cs.cmu.edu, giles@research.nj.nec.com. Deadlines Deadline for submission of manuscripts: March 15, 1997 Decisions regarding acceptance or rejection emailed to authors: April 1, 1997 Final versions of the papers due: April 15, 1997 Selection Criteria Selection of submitted papers will be on the basis of review by at least two referees. Review criteria include: originality, technical soundness, clarity of presentation, relevance of the results and potential appeal to the workshop audience. Workshop Proceedings Workshop proceedings will be published in electronic form on the world-wide web. Authors of a selected subset of accepted workshop papers might also be invited to submit revised and expanded versions of their papers for possible publication in a special issue of a journal or an edited collection of papers to be published after the conference. Workshop Organizers: Dr. Vasant Honavar Department of Computer Science 226 Atanasoff Hall Iowa State University Ames, IA 50011 honavar@cs.iastate.edu Dr. Pierre Dupont Department of Computer Science Carnegie Mellon University 5000 Forbes Ave Pittsburgh, PA 15213 pdupont@cs.cmu.edu Dr. Lee Giles NEC Research Institute 4 Independence Way Princeton, NJ 08540 giles@research.nj.nec.com </plaintext></body></html>